Kieran Kunhya Archives – Page 2 of 2 – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Demystifying Video Delivery Protocols

Posted on 30th July 2020 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Let’s face it, there are a lot of streaming protocols out there both for contribution and distribution. Internet ingest in RTMP is being displaced by RIST and SRT, whilst low-latency players such as CMAF and LL-HLS are vying for position as they try to oust HLS and DASH in existing services streaming to the viewer.

This panel, hosted by Jason Thibeault from the Streaming Video Alliance, talks about all these protocols and attempts to put each in context, both in the broadcast chain and in terms of its features. Two of the main contribution technologies are RIST and SRT which are both UDP-based protocols which implement a method of recovering lost packets whereby packets which are lost are re-requested from the sender. This results in a very high resilience to packet loss – ideal for internet deployments.

First, we hear about SRT from Maxim Sharabayko. He lists some of the 350 members of the SRT Alliance, a group of companies who are delivering SRT in their products and collaborating to ensure interoperability. Maxim explains that, based on the UDT protocol, it’s able to do live streaming for contribution as well as optimised file transfer. He also explains that it’s free for commercial use and can be found on github. SRT has been featured a number of times on The Broadcast Knowledge. For a deeper dive into SRT, have a look at videos such as this one, or the ones under the SRT tag.

Next Kieran Kunhya explains that RIST was a response to an industry request to have a vendor-neutral protocol for reliable delivery over the internet or other dedicated links. Not only does vendor-neutrality help remove reticence for users or vendors to adopt the technology, but interoperability is also a key benefit. Kieran calls out hitless switching across multiple ISPs and cellular. bonding as important features of RIST. For a summary of all of RIST’s features, read this article. For videos with a deeper dive, have a look at the RIST tag here on The Broadcast Knowledge.

Demystifying Video Delivery Protocols from Streaming Video Alliance on Vimeo.

Barry Owen represents WebRTC in this webinar, though Wowza deal with many protocols in their products. WebRTC’s big advantage is sub-second delivery which is not possible with either CMAF or LL-HLS. Whilst it’s heavily used for video conferencing, for which it was invented, there are a number of companies in the streaming space using this for delivery to the user because of it’s almost instantaneous delivery speed. Whilst a perfect rendition of the video isn’t guaranteed, unlike CMAF and LL-HLS, for auctions, gambling and interactive services, latency is always king. For contribution, Barry explains, the flexibility of being able to contribute from a browser can be enough to make this a compelling technology although it does bring with it quality/profile/codec restrictions.

Josh Pressnell and Ali C Begen talk about the protocols which are for delivery to the user. Josh explains how smoothstreaming has excited to leave the ground to DASH, CMAF and HLS. They discuss the lack of a true CENC – Common Encryption – mechanism leading to duplication of assets. Similarly, the discussion moves to the fact that many streaming services have to have duplicate assets due to target device support.

Looking ahead, the panel is buoyed by the promise of QUIC. There is concern that QUIC, the Google-invented protocol for HTTP delivery over UDP, is both under standardisation proceedings in the IETF and is also being modified by Google separately and at the same time. But the prospect of a UDP-style mode and the higher efficiency seems to instil hope across all the participants of the panel.

Watch now to hear all the details!
Speakers

	Ali C. Begen Technical Consultant, Comcast
	Kieran Kunhya Founder & CEO, Open Broadcast Systems Director, RIST Forum
	Barry Owen VP, Solutions Engineering Wowza Media Systems
	Josh Pressnell CTO, Penthera Technologies
	Maxim Sharabayko Senior Software Developer, Haivision
	Moderator: Jason Thibeault Executive Director, Streaming Video Alliance

Video: RIST and Open Broadcast Systems

Posted on 6th May 2020 by Adam K

RIST is a streaming protocol which allows lossy networks such as the internet to be used for critical streaming applications. Called Reliable Internet Stream Transport, it uses ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) retransmission technology to request any data that is lost by the network, creating reliable paths for video contribution.

In this presentation, Kieran Kunhya from Open Broadcast Systems explains why his company has chosen RIST protocol for their software-based encoders and decoders. Their initial solution for news, sports and linear channels contribution over public internet were based on FEC (Forward Error Correction), a technique used for controlling errors in transmission by sending data in a redundant way using error-correcting code. However, FEC couldn’t cope with large burst losses, there was limited interoperability and the implementation was complex. Protecting the stream by sending the same feed over multiple paths and/or sending a delayed version of the stream on the same path, had a heavy bandwidth penalty. This prompted them, instead, to implement an ARQ technique based on RFC 4585 (Extended RTP Profile for Real-time Transport Control Protocol-Based Feedback), which gave them functionality quite similar to the basic RIST functionality.

Key to the discussion, Kieran explains why they decided not to adopt the SRT protocol. As SRT is based file transfer protocol, it’s difficult or impossible to add features like bonding, multi-network and multi-point support which were available in RIST from day one. Moreover, RIST has a large IETF heritage from other industries and is vendor-independent. In Kieran’s opinion, SRT will become a prosumer solution (similar to RTMP, now, for streaming) and RIST will be the professional solution (analogous to MPEG-2 Transport Streams).

Different applications for the RIST protocol are discussed, including 24/7 linear channels for satellite uplink from playout, interactive (two-way) talking heads for news, high bitrate live events and reverse vision lines for monitoring purposes. Also, there is a big potential for using RIST in cloud solutions for live broadcast production workflows. Kieran hopes that more broadcasters will start using spin-up and spin-down cloud workflows, which will help save space and money on infrastructure.

What’s interesting, Open Broadcast Solutions are not currently interested in RIST Main Profile (the main advantages of this profile are support for encryption, authentication and in-band data). Kieran explains that to control devices in remote locations you need some kind of off-the-shelf VPN anyway. These systems provide encryption and NAT port traversal, so the problem is solved at a different layer in the OSI model and this gives customers more control over the type of encryption they want.

Watch now!

Speaker

Kieran Kunhya
Founder and CEO,
Open Broadcast Systems

Video: Panel Discussion on RIST

Posted on 19th November 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

RIST is a streaming protocol which allows unreliable/lossy networks such as the internet to be used for critical streaming applications. Called Reliable Internet Stream Protocol, it uses a light-touch mechanism to request any data that’s lost by the network. As losses are often temporary and sporadic, the chances are that the data will get through the second or, perhaps, third time. For a more in-depth explanation of RIST, check out this talk from Merrick Ackermans

The panel here at the IBC 2019 IP Showcase give an brief definition of RIST and then examine how far they’ve got with the ‘Simple Profile’ of RIST calling out things that are yet to be done. Still on the to-do list are such things as ‘pull’ streams, encryption, simplifying the port structure and embedding control.

Fixed Key encryption comes under the microscope next asking whether there’s a practical threat in terms of finding the key but also in terms of whether there are any side-channel attacks in a ‘non-standard’ encryption. The fixed key encryption has been implemented in line with NIST protocols but, as Kieran highlights, getting enough eyes on the detail is difficult with the specification being created outside of an open forum.

The panels covers the recent interop testing which shows overall positive results and then discusses whether RIST is appropriate for uncompressed video. Already, Kieran points out, Amazon Direct Connect is available in 100s of Gb/s links and so it’s completely possible to do uncompressed to the cloud. RTP is over 20 years old and is being used for much more than ever imagined at the time. As technology develops, use of RIST will also develop.

What are the other uses for RIST? Videoconferencing is one possibility, creating a generally secure link to equipment and ingest into the cloud are the others offered.

The panel fishes by looking to the future. Asking how, for instance, the encoder could react to reduced quality of the link. How much of the all the technology needed should be standardised and what features could be added. Sergio Ammirata suggests opening up the protocol for the bandwidth estimation to be requested by any interested device.

This session, bringing together DVEO, OBS, Zixi and Net Insight finishes with questions from the audience.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Sergio Ammirata Deployments and Future Development, DVEO
	Kieran Kunhya Founder, Open Broadcast Systems
	Uri Avni Founder, Zixi
	Mikael Wånggren Senior Software Engineer, Net Insight
	Ciro Noronha Executive Vice President of Engineering, Cobalt Digital

Video: RIST – an evolutionary video transport protocol

Posted on 25th February 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Delivering low-latency live-video over the public internet, or any network which sees packet loss is ever a challenge, but recently there have been a number of protocols which have been created to allow this to work.

The problem to be fixed is that packets get lost and when you have a video decoder trying to output 50 images every second, there really isn’t time to deal with missing packets. Protocols such as SRT, Zixi and, now, RIST allow a mechanism which adds a small buffer and a mechanism to request missing data.

This isn’t a problem, in general, for live streaming to consumers on devices or computers such as Netflix or iPlayer because they use HLS or similar protocols based on TCP, but for low-latency streams this is not practical.

In this talk Kieran Kunhya explains more about these basics, the challenges to be overcome and the ways of dealing with them.

He covers: